ON FARM-BUILDINGS AND LABOURERS' COTTAGES. 241 



but, notwithstanding this, the farmers, with their wives and families, 

 live in them, along with their servants, male and female. Now, in such 

 cases as these, how can anything like high moral feeling be maintained 

 in the families, not to speak of comfort ? But in such cases I have 

 invariably found this was little thought of the small rooms, and the 

 crowded condition of the occupants, making it out of the question. 

 These are by no means extreme cases ; I could refer to many even 

 worse, but I need not, as all I wish to point out is the general want of 

 accommodation in the greater part of farmhouses. In looking over the 

 country generally, no doubt, we find these in all varieties of condition 

 imaginable, from the small cottage of two rooms to the villa of from 

 ten to fifteen apartments ; but by far the greater proportion are of an 

 extremely inferior class, and comparatively few are to be found of the 

 superior. Now, what I mean to infer from these remarks in regard to 

 farmhouses is, that while proprietors subject their tenants to live in 

 inferior houses, they must be content to have their estates indifferently 

 cultivated by an inferior class of tenants; for assuredly no superior 

 tenant would condescend to inhabit an inferior house. And, moreover, 

 if they desire to have their properties well farmed by a superior class of 

 men, they must, in the first place, erect a suitable class of houses for 

 them to inhabit. 



Every dwelling-house for a tenant-farmer should be built of a size 

 suitable to the extent of the subject. This, at first sight, may seem 

 somewhat difficult to define, but in reality it is easy ; for, generally 

 speaking, the suitableness of a house for any tenant may be safely arrived 

 at by considering the probable amount of his annual income from his 

 farm. For example, if a man farms a hundred and fifty acres of land, 

 and cultivates it highly, it is expected that he will have a capital of at 

 least 2000 engaged in his business ; if so, he ought, if he manage at 

 all successfully, to realise, on an average of years, at least ten per cent 

 per annum from this amount, or say 200 a-year. Now, the question is, 

 What description of house is considered suitable for a man having this 

 income annually ? To settle the question, we have only to look about 

 to see the kind of houses tradesmen and small merchants in country 

 towns occupy who have similar incomes from their business, as the 

 farmer is as much entitled to have a house suitable to his income as they 

 have. And in the same way the kind of house suitable for a farmer on 

 any other size of farm may be easily ascertained. Were farmers' houses 

 erected for them on some such scale as this indicates, the proprietors 

 would have no difficulty in securing highly intelligent men for their 

 farms, with enough of capital for the respective subjects ; but until some- 

 thing of this kind is done for farmers, there* is little hope of the land 



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